Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds

Nepal has just instituted a complete ban on the popular battle royale game PUBG. If this sounds familiar, some cities in India were found to be arresting people just for playing the game just last month. Authorities say that the game's violence is harmful to children, it's too addictive, and children are being distracted from their schooling.

The mobile version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds received a massive update in the middle of June with the 0.6.0 release. Most notably it introduced a new season pass system and a playable first-person view. But that's old news. Looking forward, the 0.7.0 update should be coming out sometime soon, and if you would like to check it out before it's officially pushed to the stable build, you can. There is now a beta version of PUBG Mobile listed on the Play Store.

Early this morning Bloomberg broke the news that the South Korean copyright suit brought against the Fortnite creator Epic Games by PUBG Corp. has been dropped. Apparently PUBG Corp. sent a letter of withdrawal to Epic Games Inc.’s attorneys on Monday, and as a result, the case has been closed.

The developers for the mobile version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds aren't wasting any time by adding many new features before the inevitable release of Fortnite on Android. Lucky for us that means we get to play around with a few new changes thanks to the recent 0.6.0 update. The two most notable additions are the new Royale Pass system that earns players various rewards, and a first-person perspective mode that finally gives fans an easy way to enjoy FPS gameplay.

Unless you've lived under a rock, you're probably aware of the existence of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Epic's Fortnite. The former has been immensely popular on Android and the latter coming soon to offer some competition. According to a recent report by The Korea Times, PUBG has filed suit against Epic Games in Korea alleging that the latter violates its copyrights with the game Fortnite.

The battle royale genre has been getting a lot of attention with the recent mobile releases of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite. And with that popularity has come a slew of copycats and clones trying to beat their inspiration to the punch. So, of course, it was only a matter of time before lawsuits started flying, and apparently, Bluehole Studio has had enough as they have filed a suit against NetEase for copyright and trademark violations.

Last Friday I did a hands-on with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Mobile thanks to its availability as a soft-launch title in Canada. Today it would appear that the PUBG Mobile has launched worldwide minus a few European regions, though it's exactly the same version (0.3.2) as the Canadian release from last week. So short of the new areas that can access the download, nothing much has changed.

Yesterday Tencent Games opened up the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Mobile beta as a soft-launch listing on the Play Store that is freely available to players in Canada. Today I have sideloaded the APK and necessary OBB files in order to test it out and see how its development is shaping up. So far the performance has been excellent, though the touchscreen controls aren't great.

Rumblings of a PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds release on Android for Western markets started late last year, when two different versions of the game were announced for China: one made by TIMI Studio Group, the other by Lightspeed & Quantum Studio. The latter version has made its way across the globe during the last three months, as PUBG Mobile is now live on the Play Store. But, this is a soft launch, so it's Canada-only (for now).

I have been biding my time with the recent rumors of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds coming to Android to ensure that it will indeed exist as an official release. After spending some time digging through a few Chinese sites, it does look as though the rumors are legit. As of yesterday Tencent and TIMI Studio Group released an official webpage complete with a trailer for their upcoming game. If that wasn't enough good news, there is a second web page from Tencent that popped up for a different PUBG mobile game developed by Lightspeed & Quantum Studio. While it is still unknown if these games will ever come to the West, it is pretty interesting to see that there will be two official PUBG adaptations coming to Android in the near future.